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How-To Geek

If you’ve just opened your shiny new Kindle Fire and tried to connect it to Gmail using your own custom (not @gmail.com) email address, you might be in for a surprise: the email account wizard has no idea how to handle this scenario, even if you pick Gmail at the beginning. Here’s how to fix it.

Note: we’re in the middle of doing a thorough test of the Kindle Fire, and we’ll post our in-depth review in the next few days. So far: it’s a great tablet for the price.

Setting Up Gmail Custom Domain Email in Kindle Fire

You’ll need to start, naturally, by opening up the Email application and selecting from the list—you can choose Gmail, even though we’ll have to tweak the settings. Once there, enter your email address and password.

Note: if you haven’t already enabled IMAP, you’ll want to head to your Gmail mail settings page and turn it on there.

Then you’ll probably want to choose IMAP.

And now you’ll come to the screen that makes no sense. The username is wrong, the IMAP server is wrong, and the security type is wrong.

Instead of using those values, you’ll want to use the following:

Username: Your full email address

IMAP server: imap.gmail.com

Security type: SSL

Head to the next screen, which will ask you for the outgoing server settings. You’ll want to use the following:

SMTP server: smtp.gmail.com

Security type: TLS

Once you get past that screen, you’ll be able to access your email without issue.

Comments (25)

Simple mistake to overlook but make sure you have enabled imap in Gmail. I have connected with other Gmail apps before on Android but they never needed imap to be on. With the Fire’s app, it seems to need it enabled or else it will say wrong info regarding username or password.

According to the help on the device itself, for Incoming, you should choose the defaults for gmail, which are “SSL (Always)”, and “SSL (If available)” for outgoing. Those settings worked on my device. thanks for the quick how-to!

Just received my Kindle fire and am very disappointed. I can’t remove any thing from the carousel. I watched a shoe on Prime and it’s on the carousel. I went to a web page and its on the carousel. I browed a book and returned it but it is still on the carousel.

Can you delete or group on the carousel? If not that is a real problem.

I need some further help with this. My domain email worked perfectly after following these instructions, BUT my contacts did not come into my Kindle Fire. I’ve searched around on the web and can’t find any answers. Anyone have any ideas on how to get my contact into the fire and to sync?

I cannot get my gmail account (custom domain) to send from the Kindle Fire. It will receive emails but not send. I have tried all the settings for the outgoing server but I keep getting “connection error.” Can anyone suggest help?

I was able to edit my existing gmail account, using the excellent info in the article above, rather than deleting my original gmail account and adding the custom gmail account. In other words, you can edit an existing gmail account and turn it into a custom gmail account.

If you are using the 2-step verification process in google, you will have to general a application specific password to use to log in. Its under Account setting>account overview>security. You will only have to do this once. Also…remember to select IMAP under gmail settings as well.

To import contacts, take a group of your contacts and “send” them as vcard files via attachments and save the e-mail rather than sending them to anyone. Then select all of the attachments (one per contact) and save them to your documents folder on the Kindle Fire by using the USB cable that attaches to the same connection you charger uses (a miniUSB connector).

I didn’t order a cable but had one that worked that came with a camera I bought last year. Then go to your contacts on the kindle (its is a separate app from e-mail) and let it search for the .vcf files. Once they are found, import and choose ALL and let the Kindle rip. It took about 2 minutes to import 200+ contacts.